At present, in applying wear plates to earthmoving equipment, it is necessary to separately weld a multiple number of wear plates to the exterior surfaces of the said earthmoving equipment.
Mining equipment wear plates for instance are applied to earthmoving equipment to reduce the wear to the equipment itself. Instead of the actual equipment being worn, the wear plates are worn, the wear plates then being able to be relatively easily replaced at the required periods of time. This reduces the unnecessary fabrication of earthmoving equipment, by increasing the working life of said equipment.
At present, earthmoving equipment wear plates are constructed of extremely hard, abrasive resistant material which is designed to resist wear. These earthmoving equipment wear plates are constructed in sections, and each is separately welded to the surface of the earthmoving equipment. As will be appreciated, this welding operation, in attaching the earthmoving equipment wear plates to the earthmoving equipment, is extremely time consuming, resulting in, not only excessive time and man hours being spent in welding the wear plates to the earthmoving equipment, together with very long downtimes of the equipment itself, but also, the earthmoving equipment wear plates are prone to become dislodged from the earthmoving equipment due to difficulty in successfully welding the abrasive resistant material to the dissimilar parent material of the equipment.
The present invention seeks to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art, by providing a simple and easy application method and apparatus for attaching the wear plates to the earthmoving equipment.
The present invention also seeks to overcome the necessity to weld each and every wear plate to the earthmoving equipment, by providing a quick and simple interlock means to securely attach the wear plates to the equipment.